The Satan Bug

CHAPTER TEN

I'd had a phone call put through from Stanton airfield and both the General and Superintendent Hardanger were in the lounge waiting for me. Although it was still early evening the General had on the table before him the remains of what appeared to have been a pretty considerable whisky. I'd never before known him to have his first drink of the day before nine o'clock at night. His face was pale, set and strained and for the first time ever he was beginning to look his age, nothing I could put my finger on, just the slight sag of the shoulders, the indefinable air of weariness. There was something curiously pathetic about him, the pathos of a man with a broad and upright back who had suddenly, finally felt the burden of the weight he was carrying to be too much.

Hardanger didn't look a great deal better either.

I greeted them both, collected a whisky from old shirtsleeves, who was safely out of hearing range, and gladly took the weight off my feet. I said, "Where's Mary?"

"Out visiting Stella Chessingham and her mother," Hardanger said. "More broken wings for her to mend. Your surly friend behind the bar is just back from driving her there. She wanted to give them what sympathy and encouragement she could. I agreed with her that they must both be feeling pretty grim after young Chessingham's arrest, but said I didn't think it either necessary or wise. This was before the General came down. She wouldn't listen to me. You know what your wife is like, Cavell. And your daughter, sir."

"She's wasting her time," I said. "On this occasion. Young Chessingham is as innocent as the day he was born. I told his mother so at eight o'clock this morning — I had to. she's a sick woman and the shock might have killed her— and she'd have told her daughter as soon as the van called for Chessingham. They don't need either sympathy or consolation."

"What!" Hardanger leant far forward in his seat, face dark with rising anger, his big hand threatening to crush the glass clasped inside it. "What the devil are you saying, Cavell? Innocent? Damn it all, there's enough circumstantial evidence—"

"The only evidence against him is the fact that he very understandably told a lie about his driving and that the real murderer has been sending him money under a false name. To throw suspicion on him. To buy time. Always to buy time. I don't know why it is but it is essential for this murderer to buy time. He buys time every time he throws suspicion on everyone else, and he's so outstandingly clever that he's managed to throw suspicion on practically everyone: he tried to buy time when he kidnapped me this morning. The thing is, he knew months before the crime — money was first paid into Chessingham's account at the beginning of July — that it was going to be necessary to buy time. Why? Why buy time?"

"You fooled me, damn you," Hardanger said harshly. "You trumped up this story—"

"I told you the facts as I had them." I was in no mood to placate Hardanger. "If I'd said he was innocent, would you have arrested him? You know perfectly well you wouldn't. But you did, and that has bought us time, because the murderer or murderers will read their evening papers and be convinced that we're on the wrong track."

"You'll be saying next that Hartnell and his wife are being framed, too," he said gratingly.

"As regards the hammer, pliers and mud on the scooter, of course they are. You know that. For the rest, Hartnell and wife are guilty as charged. But no court's ever going to convict. A man's blackmailed into having his wife shout and wave at a truck. Damn all criminal about that. All he'll get is a couple of years on the entirely unrelated charge of embezzlement — if the Army choose to press the charge, which I doubt. But again his arrest is buying us time: the murderer's planting of hammer and pliers were another method of buying them time. They don't know we haven't bought that one. Another point in our favour."

Hardanger turned to the General. "Were you aware that Cavell was working behind my back, sir?"

The General frowned. "That's pitching it a bit strongly, isn't it, Superintendent? As for my being aware — damn it all, man, it was you who talked me into bringing Cavell into this." Very adroit indeed. "I must admit he works in a highly unorthodox fashion. Which reminds me, Cavell. Dig up anything interesting about MacDonald in Paris?"

I didn't answer for a moment. There was something offhand, strangely indifferent in his manner, as if his mind was on other and more important things. I answered in kind. "All depends what you call interesting, sir. I can give you with certainty the name of one of the men behind it all. Dr. Alexander MacDonald. And beyond all doubt he's been a top-flight Communist espionage agent for the past fifteen years. If not more."

That got them. They were the last two men on earth ever to go in for goggling, but they went in for it all the same. Just for a second. Then they stared at each other, then back at me. I told them in a minute flat what had happened. Hardanger said, "Oh, dear God!" very quietly and left to call a police car.

The General said, "You saw the police radio van outside?" I nodded.

"We're in constant touch with the Government and Scotland Yard." He fished in an inside pocket and brought out two typewritten notes. "The first of those came in about two hours ago, the second only ten minutes ago." I looked at them quickly and for the first time in my life realised that the phrase about blood running cold might have some basis in physical experience. I felt unaccountably cold, icy, even, and was glad to see Hardanger, back from ordering his car, bring three more whiskies from the bar. I knew now why both the General and Hardanger had looked so ill, so close to desperation, when I'd come in. I knew now and could understand why my trip to Paris had been a matter of relative indifference to them.

The first message had been delivered at almost the same time to Reuter's and A.P. and was very brief. The florid style was unmistakable. It read: "The walls of the home of the anti-Christ still stand. My orders have been ignored. The responsibility is yours. I have taped a virus ampoule to a simple explosive device which will be detonated at 3.45 this afternoon in Lower Hampton, Norfolk. The wind is W.S.W. If the demolition of Mordon has not commenced by midnight to-night I shall be compelled to break another ampoule tomorrow. In the heart of the City of London. The carnage will be such as the world has never seen.Yours is the choice."

"Lower Hampton is a hamlet of about 150 people four miles from the sea," the General said. "The reference to the wind means that the virus would cover only four miles of land and then be blown out over the sea. Unless the wind changed. The message was received at 2.45 this afternoon. Nearest police cars were rushed to the area and all people in the village and as many as could be reached in the area between the village and the sea were evacuated to the west." He broke off and stared at the table. "But that's rich farming land. There are many farms and few cars. It was not possible to reach them all in time, I'm afraid. A hurried search was made in Lower Hampton for the bomb, but it was worse than the needle in the haystack. At 3.45 precisely a sergeant and two constables heard a small explosion and saw fire and smoke coming from the thatch of a disused cottage. They ran for their car and you can just imagine how they took off."

My mouth felt as dry as ashes. I washed some of the ashes away by draining half a large whisky in one gulp.

The General went on: "At 4.20 an R.A.F. bomber, a photo-reconnaissance plane, took off from a base in East Anglia and flew over the area. The pilot was warned not to fly below 10,000 feet, but it's a clear evening up there and with the kind of cameras they have in the Air Force to-day there was no trouble in making a close reconnaissance. The entire area was photographed — from two miles up it doesn't take long to photograph a few square miles of territory — and the bomber landed half an hour after take off. The pictures were developed within minutes and examined by an expert. That second paper shows his findings."

It was even briefer than the first. It read: "Over a wedge-shaped area, with its point at the village of Little Hampton and its base two and a half miles of sea-coast there are no discoverable signs of life, either around houses and farm buildings or in the fields. Dead cattle in fields estimated between three and four hundred. Three flocks of sheep, also apparently lifeless. At least seven human bodies identified. Characteristic postures of both men and cattle suggest death in contorted agony. Detailed analysis following."

I finished the second half of my whisky in a second gulp. I might as well have been drinking soda pop for all the taste or the effect it had. I said, "What's the Government going to do?"

"I don't know," the General said tonelessly. "Neither do they. They will make a decision by ten o'clock to-night— and now they'll decide even faster when they hear your news. It completely alters everything. We thought we were dealing with some raving crackpot, however brilliant that crackpot: it seems instead, that we're dealing with a Communist plot to destroy the most powerful weapon that Britain — or any other country for that matter — has ever had. Maybe it's the beginnings of a plot to destroy Britain itself, I don't know, damn it all I've just come to the thought and I haven't had time to think about it. Could it be that the Communist world is planning a showdown with the West, that they're convinced that they can strike so hard and so savagely that there'll be no possibility of retaliation? Not, that is, once Mordon and its viruses are out of the way. God only knows. I think I'd rather be dealing with a crackpot any day. Besides, Cavell, we don't know that your information is correct."

"There's only one way to find out, sir." I rose to my feet. "I see the police driver is there. Shall we have a chat with MacDonald?"

We reached Mordon in eight minutes flat only to be told at the gate that MacDonald had checked out over two hours previously. Eight minutes later we pulled up at the front door of his home.

Dr. MacDonald's house was dark and deserted. Mrs. Turpin, the housekeeper, should not have been gone for the night. But she was. MacDonald had also gone, not for the night but for ever. Our bird had flown.

MacDonald hadn't even bothered to lock the door when leaving. He'd have been in too much of a hurry for that. We made our way into the hallway, switched on lights and looked quickly over the ground floor. No fires, no still warm radiators, no smell of cooking, no cigarette smoke still hanging in the air. Whoever had left hadn't left by a back window as we had come in by the front door. He'd left a long long time ago. I felt old and sick and tired. And foolish. Because I knew now why he'd left in such a hurry.

We went over the house, not wasting time, starting from the attic dark-room. The battery of expensive photographic equipment was as I had seen it before, but this time I was seeing it in a new light. Given sufficient facts and sufficient time even Cavell could arrive at a conclusion. We went over his bedroom, but there were no signs of hasty packing or hasty departure. That was strange. People going on a journey from which they have no intention of returning usually take a bare minimum of supplies to tide them over, no matter what their hurry. An inspection of the bathroom was equally puzzling. Razor, brush, shaving cream, toothbrush — they were all still there. MacDonald's old colonel, I thought inconsequentially, wasn't going to be any too happy when he arrived to identify MacDonald and found no one left to identify.

Even more baffling was the kitchen. Mrs. Turpin, I knew, used to leave every night at six-thirty when MacDonald arrived home, leaving his dinner prepared. MacDonald had been in the habit of helping himself and leaving the dishes for his housekeeper the following morning. But there were no signs whatsoever of any food preparations. No roasts in the oven, no pots of still warm food, an electric stove so cold that it couldn't have been used for hours.

I said, "The last of the plain-clothes men on the search job would have been gone by half past three at the latest. No reason why Mrs. Turpin shouldn't have got on with the cooking of dinner for Dr. MacDonald — and MacDonald strikes me as a character who would be very huffed indeed if he didn't find his chow ready. But she prepared none. Why?"

"She knew he wouldn't be wanting any," Hardanger said heavily. "From something she heard or saw this afternoon she knew our worthy doctor wouldn't be wanting to linger too much around these parts after she'd told him what she'd heard or seen. Which argues connivance at or at least knowledge of MacDonald's activities."

"It's my fault," I said savagely. "That damn' woman! She must have heard me telephoning the General about going to Paris. God only knows how long she was standing there in the doorway, watching me, seeing the letter in my hand. But I didn't see her because she was on my blind side. She must have noticed that and the limp and told MacDonald by phone. And what I was talking about. He'd have known straight away that it must have been me, limp or no limp. It's all my bloody fault," I repeated. "It never crossed my mind to suspect her. I think we should have a talk with Mrs. Turpin. If she's at home, that is."

Hardanger moved off to a phone while the General accompanied me into MacDonald's study. I moved over to the big old-fashioned knee-hole desk where MacDonald's correspondence and photographic albums had been discovered. It was locked. I said to the General, "Back in a minute, sir," and went outside.

There was nothing in the garage that would be of any use to me. Backing on the garage was a large tool-shed. I switched on the torch and looked round. Garden implements, a small pile of grey breeze-blocks, a pile of empty cement sacks, a work-bench and bicycle. No claw-hammer, which was what I was looking for, but I found the next best thing, a fairly heavy hatchet.

I went back to the study with this and crossed to the desk just as Hardanger came into the room.

"You going to smash that desk open?" he demanded.

"Let MacDonald object if he feels like it." I swung the axe twice and the drawer splintered. The albums and the doctor's correspondence with the World Health Organisation were still here. I opened the album at the page with the missing photograph and showed it to the General.

"A photograph our good friend didn't seem to care to have around," I said. "I have more than a vague, obscure feeling that it may be important. See that scratched out caption, something about six letters, some town certainly, starting with TO. I can't get it. With any other kind of paper or with two different kinds of ink it would have been easy for the lab boys. But white ink on white ink on this porous blotting paper stuff? No good."

"Not a chance." Hardanger gave me a suspicious look. "Why is it important?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't worry about what the caption was. Did you find our dear Mrs. Turpin at home?"

"No reply. She lives alone, a widow, as I found out from the local station after I'd called her number. An officer has gone to check, but he'll find nothing. I've put out an all-stations call for her."

"That'll help," I said sourly. I went quickly through MacDonald's correspondence, picking up replies from his W.H.O. correspondents in Europe. I knew what I was looking for, and it took me only two minutes to isolate half a dozen letters, from a Dr. John Weissmann in Vienna. I handed them across to the General and Hardanger. "Exhibit 'A' for the Old Bailey when MacDonald's en route to the gallows."

The General looked at me, his face old and tired and expressionless. Hardanger said bluntly, "What are you talking about, Cavell?"

I hesitated and looked at the General. He said quietly, "It'll be all right now, my boy. Hardanger will understand. And it'll never go any further."

Hardanger looked from me to the papers and then back to me again. "What will I understand? It's time I understood. I knew from the beginning that there was something I couldn't touch in this damned business. You accepted this job with too much alacrity in the first place."

"I'm sorry," I said. "It had to be this way. You know I've been in and out of a few jobs since the war — Army, police, Special Branch, Narcotics, Special Branch again, security chief in Mordon, and then private detective. None of it really meant anything. I've been working for the General here non-stop for the past sixteen years. Every time I was heaved out of a job — well, the General arranged it."

"I'm not all that surprised," Hardanger said heavily. I was glad to see he was more intrigued than angry. "I've had my suspicions."

"That's why you're a superintendent," the General murmured.

"Anyway, about a year ago, my predecessor in security in Mordon, Easton Deny, began having his suspicions. I won't go into the where and the when of it, but he came to the conclusion that certain highly secret items in the bacteriological and virus line were being smuggled out of Mordon. His suspicions became certainties when Dr. Baxter approached him privately and said he was convinced that certain stuff was going astray."

"Dr. Baxter!" Hardanger looked slightly stunned.

"Yes, Baxter. Sorry about that, too — but I told you, plain as I could, not to waste time on him. He said to Deny that although it wasn't the top secret stuff that was going — that was impossible to get out of 'A' laboratory — it was nevertheless pretty important stuff. Very important stuff, indeed. Britain leads the world in the production of microbiological diseases for wartime use against men, animals and plants. You'll never hear of this when the Parliamentary Estimates for Mordon Health Centre are being passed, but our scientists in Mordon have either discovered or refined to the purest and most deadly forms the germs for causing plague, typhus, smallpox, rabbit and undulant fever in man: hog cholera, fowl pest, Newcastle disease, rinderpest, foot-and-mouth, glanders and anthrax in livestock: and blights like the Japanese beetle, European corn borer, Mediterranean fruit fly, boll-weevil, citrus cancer, wheat rust and heaven knows what else in plants. All very useful in either limited or all-out warfare."

"What's all this got to do with Dr. MacDonald?" Hardanger demanded.

"I'm coming to it. Over two years ago our agents in Poland began taking an interest in the newly-built Lenin Museum on the outskirts of Warsaw. So far, this museum has never been opened to the public. It never will be — it's the equivalent of Mordon, a purely microbiological research station. One of our agents — he's a card-carrying member of the party— managed to get himself employed there and made the interesting discovery that the Poles were discovering and refining the various bugs I just mentioned a few weeks, or at most months, after they had been perfected in Mordon. The inference was too obvious to miss."

"Easton Derry started investigating. He made two mistakes: he played it too close to the cuff, without letting us know what was going on, and he unwittingly gave himself away. How, we've no idea. He may even have taken into his confidence, quite unknowingly, the man who was responsible for smuggling the stuff out of Mordon. MacDonald, for a certainty — it would be too much to expect two espionage agents operating at the same time. Anyway, someone became aware that Easton Derry was in danger of finding out too much. So Derry disappeared."

"The General here then made arrangements to have me removed from the Special Branch and introduced into Mordon as security officer. The first thing I did was to stake out a decoy duck. I had a steel flask of botulinus toxin, strength one — it was so labelled, introduced into a cupboard in number one lab annexe. The same day the flask disappeared. We had a VMF receiver installed at the gates, for the flask contained not toxin but a micro-wave battery-powered transistor sender. Anyone carrying that and coming within two hundred yards of the gate would have been picked up at once. You will understand," I said dryly, "that anyone picking up a flask of botulinus toxin is unlikely to open it up to see if it really does contain toxin.."

"We picked up no one. It wasn't hard to guess what happened. After dark someone had strolled across to a deserted part of the boundary fence and chucked the flask into an adjacent field — it's only a ten-yard throw to clear all the fences. Not because they had any suspicions of the contents but because this was the way it would usually be done — you know how often spot checks and searches are made of people leaving Mordon. By eight o'clock that evening we had micro-wave receivers installed at London Airport, Southend and Lydd airfields, the Channel ports and—"

"Wouldn't the shock of having been flung over the fence have smashed the transmitter?" Hardanger objected.

"The American watch company that makes these transmitters would be most displeased if one did break," I said. "They can be fired from a high velocity naval gun without being affected in the slightest. Anyway, late that night we picked up a signal in London Airport. Almost inevitably it was from a man boarding a B.E.A. flight to Warsaw. We took him and he told us he was a courier, picking up stuff about once a fortnight from an address in South London. He'd never actually seen his contact."

"He told you that?" Hardanger said sourly. "I can imagine how you made him volunteer that information."

"You'd be wrong. We told him — he was a naturalised British subject — ex-Czech — that espionage was a capital offence and he thought he was turning Queen's evidence. He turned it pretty fast, too. It was his supplier from Mordon we wanted to nail, so I was duly thrown out of there and have been haunting this damn address and neighbourhood for the past three weeks. We couldn't get anyone else to do the job because I was the only one who knew and who could identify all the scientists and technicians in Mordon. But no luck— except that Dr. Baxter reported that the disappearances had stopped. So we seemed to have stopped that leak — temporarily, anyway."

"But according to Baxter and our Polish informant, that wasn't the only leak. We had learnt that the Lenin Museum had developed viruses that had not been stolen from Mordon — but which had been produced in Mordon. Someone, obviously, was sending them information on the breeding and development of those strains. And now we've found that out, too." I tapped the papers, MacDonald's correspondence with his W.H.O. contact in Vienna. "Not a new system, but almost impossible to detect. Micro-photography."

"All that expensive photographic equipment upstairs?" the General murmured.

"Exactly. There's a camera expert due from London to look at his stuff, but his journey's hardly necessary now. Look at those letters from Dr. Weissmann. In every one you will note that the dot from an 'i' or a full stop is missing in the first paragraph. Weissmann typed a message, reduced it to the size of a dot by micro-miniature photography and stuck it on the letter in place of some other dot. All MacDonald had to do was to pry it loose and enlarge it. And he, of course, did the same in his correspondence with Weissmann. And he didn't do it for pennies, either." I glanced around the richly furnished room. "He's earned a fortune over the years — and not a penny tax, either."

There was a minute's silence, then the General nodded. "That must be the right of it. At least MacDonald won't be troubling us any more." He looked up at me and smiled without humour. "When it comes to locking stable doors after the horse has taken off, we have few equals. There's also another door I can lock for you, supposing it's any use to you. The caption that's been scratched out in this album."

"Toulon? Tournai?"

"Neither." He turned to the back board of the album. "This had been prepared for certain members of the W.H.O. by a firm called Gucci Zanolette, Via XX Settembre, Genoa. The word that has been scratched out is Torino — the Italian, of course, for Turin."

Turin. Only a word, but he might as well have hit me with a sledge-hammer. It had about the same effect. Turin. I sat in a chair because all of a sudden I felt I had to sit, and after the first dazed shock started to wear off I managed to whip a few of the less lethargic brain cells out of their coma and started thinking again. It wasn't much in the way of thinking, not as thinking went, for with the beating and the soaking I had received, the lack of sleep and food, I was a fair way below my best insofar as anything resembling active cerebration was concerned. Slowly, laboriously, I assembled a few facts in the befogged recesses of my mind, and no matter how I reassembled them those facts formed the same mosaic every time. Two and two always came out to four.

I rose heavily to my feet and said to the General, "It's like the man says, sir. You speak more truly than you know."

"Are you all right, Cavell?" There was sharp anxiety in the voice.

"I'm falling to pieces. My mind, such as it is, is still on its hinges. Or I think so. We'll soon find out."

Torch in hand, I turned and left the room. The General and Hardanger hesitated, then followed. I suppose they were exchanging all sorts of apprehensive glances, but I was past caring.

I'd already been in the garage and shed, so those weren't the places to look. Somewhere in the shrubbery, I thought drearily — and it was still raining. In the hall I turned off into the kitchen and was about to make for the back door when I saw a flight of steps leading down to the cellar. I remembered vaguely that Sergeant Carlisle had made mention of this when he and his men had been searching the house that afternoon. I went down the flight of steps, opened the cellar door and switched on the overhead light. I stood aside to let the General and Hardanger into the cellar.

"It's as you said, sir," I murmured to the General. "MacDonald won't be troubling us any more."

Which was not quite accurate. MacDonald was going to give some trouble yet. To the police doctor, the undertaker and the man who would have to cut the rope by which he was suspended by the neck from the heavy iron ring in the overhead loading hatch. As he dangled there, feet just clear of the floor and brushing the legs of an overturned chair, he was the stuff that screaming nightmares are made of: eyes staring wide in the frenzied agony of death, bluish-purple face, swollen tongue protruding between blackened lips drawn far back in the snarling rictus of dissolution. No, not the stuff that dreams are made of.

"My good God!" The General's voice was a hushed whisper. "MacDonald." He gazed at the dangling figure then said slowly, "He must have known his time was running out."

I shook my head. "Someone else decided for him that his time had run out."

"Someone else—" Hardanger examined the dead man closely, his face giving nothing away. "His hands are free. His feet are free. He was conscious when he started to strangle. That chair was brought down from the kitchen. And yet you say—"

"He was murdered. Look at the streaks and marks in that coal dust a few feet from the chair, and that disturbed pile of coal with lumps kicked all over the cellar floor. Look at the weals and the blood on the inside of the thumbs."

"He could have changed his mind at the last minute," Hardanger rumbled. "Lots of them do. As soon as he started choking he probably grabbed the rope above his head and took the weight until he couldn't hang on any more. That would account for the marks on his thumbs."

"The marks on his thumbs were caused by twine or wire binding them together," I said. "He was marched down here, almost certainly at gun-point, and made to lie-down on the floor. He may have been blindfolded, I don't know. Probably. Whoever killed him passed a rope through the ring and had the loop round MacDonald's neck and had started hauling before MacDonald could do anything about it. That's what caused all that mess in the coal dust — MacDonald trying to scrabble madly to his feet as the pressure tightened round his neck. With his thumbs bound behind his back he made it with the assistance of his executioner, but it wouldn't have been easy. It only postponed death by seconds, the man on the end of the rope just kept on hauling. Can't you see MacDonald almost tearing his thumbs off in an effort to free them? By and by he would be on tiptoe — but a man can't stand on tiptoe for ever. When he was dead our pal on the heaving end got a chair and used it to help him lift MacDonald clear off the floor — MacDonald was a big heavy man. When he'd secured him there, he cut the twine on MacDonald's thumbs and kicked over the chair — to make it look like suicide. It's our old buy-time-at-any-price friend. If he could make us think that MacDonald did himself in because he thought the net was closing round him, then he hoped that we would believe that MacDonald was the king-pin in this business. But he wasn't sure."

"You're guessing," Hardanger said.

"No. Can you see a never-say-die character like MacDonald, not only a highly decorated officer who fought in a tank regiment for six years but also a nerveless espionage agent for many years after that, committing suicide when things started closing in on him? MacDonald thinking of giving up or giving in? He wouldn't have known how to go about it, most probably. MacDonald was well and truly murdered — which he no doubt richly deserved to be anyway. But the real point is that he wasn't murdered only so that our friend could cast more red herrings around and so buy more time: he had to die and our friend thought he might as well make it look like suicide while he was about it in the hope of stalling us further. I was. guessing, Hardanger, but not any more."

"MacDonald had to die?" Hardanger studied me through a long considering silence then said abruptly, "You seem fairly sure about all this."

"I'm certain. I know." I picked up the coal shovel and started heaving away some of the coal that was piled up against the back wall of the cellar. There must have been close on a couple of tons of the stuff reaching almost as high as the ceiling and I was in no condition for anything much more strenuous than brushing my teeth but I had to shift only a fraction of it: for every shovelful I scooped away from the base almost a hundred-weight of lumps came clattering down on to the floor.

"What do you expect to find under that lot?" Hardanger said with heavy sarcasm. "Another body?"

"Another body is exactly what I do expect to find. I expect to find the late Mrs. Turpin. The fact that she tipped off MacDonald about me and didn't bother preparing dinner because she knew MacDonald wouldn't be staying for dinner owing to the fact that he would be taking off for the high timber shows beyond all doubt that she was in cahoots with our pal here. What MacDonald knew, she knew. It would have been pointless to silence MacDonald if Mrs. Turpin had been left alive to squawk. So she was attended to."

But wherever she had been attended to, it hadn't been in the cellar. We went upstairs and while the General went to talk for quite a long time on the scrambler radio-phone in the police van that had followed us from Alfringham, Hardanger and I, with the assistance of two police drivers and a couple of torches, started to scour the grounds. It was no easy job, for the good doctor, who had done so well for himself in the way of furnishing his house, had also done himself pretty well in the way of buying himself privacy, for his policies, half garden, half parkland, extended to over four acres, the whole of it surrounded by an enormous beech hedge that would have stopped a tank.

It was dark and very cold with no wind, the heavy rain falling vertically through the thinning leaves of the dripping trees to the sodden earth beneath. The appropriate setting, I thought grimly, for a search for a murdered body: and there's an awful lot of searching in four acres on a black and miserable night.

The beech hedge had been trimmed some time during the past month and the clipping piled up in a distant corner of the garden. We found Mrs. Turpin under this pile, not very deep down, just enough branches and twigs over her to hide her from sight. Lying beside her was the hammer I had failed to find in the tool-shed and it required only a glance at the back of her head to know the reason why the hammer was there. At a guess I would have said that the person who had tried to stove in my ribs had also wielded the hammer on Mrs. Turpin: my ribs, like the dead woman's head, bore witness to the insensate and unreasoning ferocity of a broken and vicious mind.

Back in the house I broached MacDonald's whisky supplies. He wouldn't be wanting it any more and as he'd carefully pointed out to me that he had no relations and therefore no one to leave it to, it seemed a pity to waste it. We needed it, badly. I poured out hefty tots, one apiece for Hardanger and myself, the other two for the police drivers and if Hardanger took a dim view of this theft of property and contravention of standing orders by offering intoxicating liquor to policemen on duty he kept it to himself. He finished his whisky before any of us. The two policemen left just as the General returned from the radio van. He seemed to have aged a year for every minute since last I'd seen him, the lines about the nose and mouth more deeply trenched than ever.

"You found her?" He took the offered glass.

"We found her," Hardanger acknowledged. "Dead, as Cavell said she would be. Murdered."

"It hardly matters." The General shivered suddenly and took a deep gulp of his whisky. "She's only one. This time to-morrow — how many thousands? God knows how many thousands. This madman has sent another message. Usual Biblical language, walls of Mordon still standing, no signs of demolition, so has advanced his timetable. If demolition doesn't start on Mordon by midnight he's going to break a botulinus toxin ampoule in the heart of London, at four o'clock this morning, within a quarter of a mile of New Oxford Street."

This seemed to call for some more whisky. Hardanger said, "He's no madman, sir."

"No." The General rubbed his forehead wearily. "I told them what Cavell found out, what we think. They're in a complete panic now. Do you know that some national dailies are already on the streets — just before six o'clock? Unprecedented, but so is the situation. The papers seem to be very accurately reflecting the terror of the people and are begging — or demanding — that the Government yield to this madman — for at the time of printing everyone thought it was just a crazed crackpot. Word of the wiping out of this segment of East Anglia is just beginning to come through on constant radio and TV news broadcasts and everyone is terrified out of their wits. Whoever is behind all this is a brilliant devil: a few hours and he has the nation on its knees. It's the man's frightening speed of operation, the lack of time-lag between threat and carrying out of threat that's so terrifying. Especially with every paper and news broadcast plugging the theme that this madman doesn't know the difference between the botulinus toxin and the Satan Bug and that it may very well be the Satan Bug he uses next time."

"In fact," I said, "all those who have been moaning and complaining so bitterly that life is hardly worth the living in the shadow of a nuclear holocaust have suddenly discovered that it might very well be worth living after all. You think the Government will give in?"

"I can't say," the General admitted. "I'm afraid I rather misjudged the Premier. I thought he was as windy as they come. I don't know now. He's toughened his attitude amazingly. Maybe he's ashamed of his earlier panic-stricken reaction. Maybe he sees the chance to make his imperishable mark on history."

"Maybe he's like us," I said. "Maybe he's been drinking whisky, too."

"Maybe. He's at present consulting with the Cabinet. He says that if this is a Communist scheme he'll be damned if he gives in. If the Communists are behind it, he says the last thing in the world we can afford to do is to give in for though not yielding to their demands that Mordon be demolished may bring death to many, yielding to their demands will bring eventual death to all. Myself, I think that attitude is the only one, and I agree with him when he says he's ready to evacuate the city of London before he gives in."

"Evacuate London?" Hardanger said in disbelief. "Ten million people in ten hours. Fantastic. The man's mad. Impossible."

"It's not quite as drastic as all that, thank heaven. It's a windless evening, the met. office forecasts a windless night and it's raining heavily. It seems that an airborne virus is carried down to earth by heavy rain, having a much greater affinity for water than for air. The experts doubt whether in windless rainy conditions the virus will get more than a few hundred yards from its point of release. If the need arises they propose to evacuate the area between Euston Road and the Thames, from Portland Street and Regent Street in the west, to Gray's Inn Road in the east."

"That's feasible enough," Hardanger admitted. "Place is practically deserted by night anyway — mainly a business, office and shop area. But this virus. It'll be carried away by the rain. It'll pollute the Thames. It may get into the drinking water. What's to happen — are people to be told to refrain from washing or drinking until the twelve hour oxidisation period is up?"

"That's what they say. Unless the water has been stored and covered beforehand, that is. My God, what's going to come of it all? I've never felt so damned helpless in my life. We don't seem to have a single solitary lead into this business. If only we had a suspicion, the slightest pointing finger as to whom was behind all this — well, by heaven, if we could get to him I'd turn my back and let Cavell here get to work on him."

I drained my glass and put it down. "You mean that, sir?"

"What do you think?" He glanced up from his glass then stared at me with his tired grey eyes. "What do you mean? Cavell? Can you point a finger?"

"I can do better than that, sir. I know. I know who it is."

The General was a great disappointment as far as reaction went. He always was. No gasps, no wide-eyed stares, no emotional pyrotechnics. He murmured: "Half of my kingdom, Pierre. Who?"

"The last proof," I said. "The last proof and then I can say. We missed it and it was staring us in the face. At least, it was staring me in the face. And Hardanger. To think the country depends on people like us to safeguard them. Policemen, detectives. We couldn't detect the holes in Gruyere cheese." I turned to Hardanger. "We've just made a pretty thorough search of the garden. Agreed?"

"Agreed. So?"

"Hardly missed a square foot?" I persisted,

"Go on," he rumbled impatiently.

"Did you see any signs of freshly-built masonary? Huts? Sheds? Walls? Fishponds? Decorative stonework? Anything?"

He shook his head, his eyes wary. I was going off my rocker. "Nothing. There was nothing of the kind."

"Then what happened to all the cement in the empty cement bags in the tool-shed? The ones we saw when we found the tarpaulin there? It didn't vanish. And the few breeze-blocks we saw? Probably only the remainder of a fair stack of them. If outdoor masonry work wasn't a hobby of MacDonald's, then what would be the most likely place to find such masonry work? In a dining-room? In a bedroom?"

"Suppose you tell me, Cavell?"

"I'll do better than that. I'll show you." I left them, went out to the tool-shed and hunted around for a crowbar or pick. I could find neither. The nearest was a small sledge. It would have to do. I picked it up along with a bucket, went into the kitchen where the General and Hardanger were waiting for me, filled the bucket at the kitchen sink and led the way down the stairs to the cellar. Hardanger, apparently oblivious of the presence of the dead man dangling from the ceiling, said heavily, "What do you propose to demonstrate, Cavell? How to make coal briquettes?"

The telephone rang in the hallway upstairs. Automatically, we all looked at each other. Dr. MacDonald's incoming calls might be very interesting. Hardanger said, "I'll answer it," and left.

We heard his voice on the phone, and then my name being called. I started up the stairs, conscious of the General following me.

Hardanger handed me the phone. "For you. Won't give his name. Want's to speak to you personally."

I took the receiver. "Cavell speaking."

"So you are on the loose and the little lady wasn't lying." The words came over the wire like a deep, dark and throaty whisper. "Lay off, Cavell. Tell the General to lay off, Cavell. If you want to see the little lady alive again."

These new synthetic resins are pretty tough so the receiver didn't crush in my palm. It must have been pretty close, though. My heart did a long slow summersault and landed on its back with a thud. I kept my voice steady and said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The beautiful Mrs. Cavell. I have her. She would like to speak to you."

A moment's silence, then her voice came. "Pierre? Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry—" Her voice broke off abruptly in a gasp followed by a scream of agony. Silence. Again the dark whisper, "Lay off, Cavell," and then the click of a replaced receiver. I replaced mine, the receiver making a sharp staccato rattle against the rest. My hand was the hand of a man with the ague.

Shock or fear or both may have frozen my face into an expression of normalcy or maybe the make-up on my face didn't transmit expression too well. Whichever it was, they didn't notice anything amiss for the General said, "Who was it?" in a normal curious tone.

"I don't know." I paused and went on mechanically, "They've got Mary."

The General had had his hand on the door. Now he dropped it to his side in a ridiculously slow-motion gesture that took almost ten seconds while something in his face died. Hardanger whispered something, something unprintable: his face was like a stone. Neither of them asked me to repeat what I had said, neither was in the slightest doubt as to what I had meant.

"They told us to lay off," I went on in the same wooden voice. "Or they'd kill her. They have her, all right. She spoke a few words and then screamed. They must have hurt her, badly."

Hardanger said, almost desperately, "How could he have known that you had escaped? Or even suspected? How—"

"Dr. MacDonald is how," I said. "He knew — Mrs. Turpin told him — and the killer learnt from MacDonald." I stared almost unseeingly at the General's face, a face still impassive, but with all the life and animation gone from it. I went on, "I'm sorry. If anything happens to Mary it will be my fault My own criminal folly and negligence."

The General said, "What are we going to do, my boy?" The voice was tired and listless to match the dullness that had replaced the soldierly fire in his eye. "You know they are going to kill your wife. People like that always kill."

"We're wasting time," I said harshly. "Two minutes, that's all I need. To make sure."

I ran down to the cellar, picked up the bucket and tossed half its contents against the opposite wall. The water spread and ran down quickly to the floor. As a cleaning agent it was a dead failure, making hardly any impression whatsoever on the ingrained coal dust of a score or more of years. With the General and Hardanger still watching uncomprehendingly I threw the remainder of the bucket's contents against the rear wall, where the coal had been piled so high before my recent excavation. The water splashed off and ran down into the coal, leaving the wall almost as clear and clean and fresh as if it had been built only a few weeks previously. Hardanger glared at it, then at me then back at the wall again.

"My apologies, Cavell," he said. "That would be why the coal was piled so high against the wall — to conceal the traces of recent work."

I didn't waste time speaking, time was now the one commodity we'd run clear out of: instead I picked up the sledgehammer and swung at the upper line of breeze work — the lower portion was solid concrete. One swing only. I felt as if someone had slid a six-inch stiletto between my right ribs. Maybe the doctor had been right, maybe my ribs weren't as securely anchored as nature had intended. Without a word I handed the sledge to Hardanger and sat down wearily on the upturned bucket.

Hardanger weighed sixteen stone and in spite of the calm impassivity of his features he was just clear mad all the way through. With all the power and vicious determination that was in him he attacked that wall of breeze as if it were the archetype of all things evil on earth. The wall hadn't a chance. On the third stroke the first block of breeze was splintered and dislodged and within thirty seconds he had hammered in a hole about two feet square. He stopped, looked at me and I rose to my feet like the old, old man I felt I was and switched on my torch. Together, we peered into the peephole.

Between the false wall and the real cellar wall behind there was a gap of under two feet and jammed at the bottom of this narrow space and half-covered with broken masonry, chips and dust from the fractured breeze-blocks lay the remains of what had once been a man. Broken, twisted, savagely mutilated, but still undoubtedly the remains of a man.

Hardanger said in a voice ominously calm and steady, "Do you know who this is, Cavell?"

"I know him. Easton Derry. My predecessor as security chief in Mordon."

"Easton Derry." The General was as unnaturally controlled as Hardanger. "How can you tell? His face is unrecognisable."

"Yes. That ring on his left hand has a blue Cairngorm stone. Easton Derry always wore a ring with a blue Cairngorm. That's Easton Derry."

"What — what did this to him?" The General stared down at the half-naked body. "A road crash? Some — some wild animal?" For a long minute he stared down in silence at the dead man, then straightened and turned to me, the age and weariness in his face more accentuated than ever, but the old eyes bleak and icy and still. "A man did this to him. He was tortured to death."

"He was tortured to death," I said.

"And you know who did it?" Hardanger reminded me.

"I know who did it."

Hardanger pulled a warrant form and pen from an inside pocket and stood waiting. I said, "You won't need that, Superintendent. Not if I get to him first. In case I don't make it out in the name of Dr. Giovanni Gregori. The real Dr. Gregori is dead."